One way to do this is through the millions of cheap, tiny digital sensors generating data from shoes, tires, shopping carts, jet-engine parts, medical equipment, and just about anything else you can imagine.

But another type of sensor promises even deeper visibility and insight: video. Connected video — when deployed in the right situations and combined with other IoE components, such as analytics and mobility — can truly transform the ways in which we sense the world. And for organizations, video will provide rich, real-time insights that will drive hyper-aware decision-making and predictive strategies.

The saying ‘Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell you how I will behave’ could have been the perfect tag line for the US Health Care Reforms. When we look at how Health Care Information technology is getting used to enable reforms, we see that most of the technologies existed prior to the reforms, but there wasn’t a compelling reason to adopt it. Once the measurement criteria, the carrots and the sticks were defined, the behaviors changed, and to achieve the metrics, the technology adoption picked up. As an example, according to CDC’s report, the adoption of office based physicians with EHR systems has increased to 78.4% in 2013 from 17.3% in 2003.

Percentage of office based physicians with EHR systems in US

Maybe a coincidence, but the Health Care reforms and Health Care Internet of Everything (IoE) are very much intertwined. The Health Care reforms focus on the ‘why’ and ‘what’ changes are needed to enable outcomes and define how performance is measured. The Health Care Internet of Everything focuses on how technology can be leveraged to enable the goals of Health Care Reforms. By connecting the unconnected, IoE brings more information from multiple sources (things and people) to create an enhanced evidence based model to enable better outcomes.

From an IT perspective, Health Care Reforms requires breaking boundaries, opening up the access, enabling choices, improving data collection from multiple critical sources, and enabling information sharing. It is definitely a challenge to achieve these needs using the traditional approaches in Health Care. Hence Health Care approaches have evolved to leverage Health care IT as a change agent, thereby resulting in many new Health Care IT transitions.

Let us explore six key Health Care IT transitions that have significant security implications.

In the past, they were called ‘Patients’, today their mindset and their behavior patterns have changed; they are called ‘Consumers’ of healthcare. They just don’t look at healthcare to consume the services when they are sick, but see it as a means to help them maintain their wellness and remain healthy. They want to be in the driver’s seat, and they want to be empowered and be part of the care decisions.

The Health Care Reforms and Health Care Internet of Everything(IoE) have accelerated the adoption of ‘consumer like’ behavior. From its focus on increased access to care and information, prevention and wellness, the meaningful use criteria calls for specific metrics such as the need for at least 5% of patients to send secure messages to providers. These have accelerated the use of patient portals and mobile apps and wellness devices. According to a report by Research and Markets, the mobile health market is expected to reach $26 billion in revenue by 2017.

Earlier this week, I was presenting at a security conference, the SecConX conference 2014 on the subject ‘At the Security Crossroads of Health Care Reforms and IoE enabled e-health’. I started off the presentation with a slide with three questions to gauge the audience’s adoption of consumer grade fitness devices, patient portal and mobile apps.

To cross a busy intersection safely, it’s best to have all of your senses alert. That way, if you don’t happen to see that oncoming truck ignoring the “Walk” sign, you will probably still hear it. In the case of a heavy cement mixer, you may even feel the low rumble of its powerful engine first.

In the Internet of Everything (IoE), a similar principle applies. We call it “sensor fusion,” and it involves combining two or more sensors — often of different types — to monitor a specific environment and offer actionable insights more intelligently. These could be cameras and Wi-Fi tags or weight-sensing shelves and ultrasonic imaging, to name just two combinations. Moreover, the combined sensor data can itself be fused with other information streams — for example, those relating to weather, operations, news, or social media.

Until recently, sensor fusion has been mostly exploited in specialized devices such as robots, but it is now driving a revolution in enterprise systems. This will bring new life to entire industries and completely transform stores, manufacturing floors, and transportation corridors. By greatly improving the accuracy of their measurements, organizations will be able to offer rich new experiences and gain substantial competitive advantage.

Collaboration in the era of the Internet of Everything (IoE) is not just about people connecting with people. Yet when you ask most people how they picture “collaboration,” they probably think of person-to-person collaboration first: perhaps a web-based conference call where people are sharing content such as a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation. Or they might envision an immersive teleconference experience with people from different continents, across multiple time zones. Or they might think of a more traditional approach—a group of people having a lively discussion around a conference table, with someone taking notes on a whiteboard.

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